The Jumbies

The Jumbies, Tracey Baptiste, 234 pages

Corinne La Mer grows oranges by the house where she lives with her father on the edge of the forest, and in the forest dwell the nightmarish jumbies, if they’re even real, of course. But after she chases an agouti into the woods one day and is followed by a mysterious figure with glowing yellow eyes, things start to change. A beautiful woman nobody has seen before shows up at the market to deal with the witch, and when Corinne returns home, this woman, Severine, is making dinner for her father. Could Severine be a jumbie? What secrets might she know about Corinne’s mother? Corinne and her friends must save her father and the village before Severine’s plans come to fruition.

I wanted so much to like this book – I love the idea of bringing non-European fairytales and folklore to a wider audience (Baptiste is from Trinidad and very loosely based the book on the fairytale “The Magic Orange Tree”). However, the plot felt disjointed and rushed. There wasn’t enough build to the climax, and the relationships between the characters felt forced and ungrounded. It’s likely that this wouldn’t overly bother a younger reader, and since The Jumbies is aimed at a middle-grade audience, I understand why Baptiste left things fairly simple. I still found myself wishing for a richer story and a deeper-developed friendship between Corinne and the neighboring children. (For instance, how did Corinne grow up on this small island and manage not to befriend or at least know of Dru, the child of one of her neighbors? Or indeed have any friends or know anyone else at all?) I think The Jumbies is a wonderful concept, but unfortunately not very well executed.